It's Safer in Maine

The Pine Tree State has lowest number of injuries

Maine reported the highest rate of non-fatal workplace injuries in the U.S., according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Employers are required to report injuries to the OSHA, and participating states and territories share that data with the Bureau of Labor Statistics. BLS tallies the data and calculates the injury rate per 100 full-time workers.
In 2021, Maine reported an incident rate of 4.7, that’s a 9% increase from 2020 when the rate was 4.3.
The national average rate in 2021 was 2.9 and three states tied for the second-highest incident rate, — Washington, Oregon, and Vermont (3.8).
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Shipyard fined after worker killed

A North Charleston, South Carolina, shipyard has been fined $8,701 by OSHA after a worker died while on the job last summer.
Claudio Munoz Bustos, 63, was killed when he fell between 75 to 100 feet at Detyens Shipyard.
Bustos was preparing to weld the inside of a ship’s smokestack that night.
He was standing on a plywood plank, which did not hold Bustos’ weight, causing his fatal fall, OSHA said.
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OSHA finds unsanitary conditions aboard seafood vessel

Employees aboard the F/V Pacific Producer in Alaska faced dangers purely of their employer’s making, according to an investigation by OSHA and the U.S. Coast Guard.
Inspectors found murky, brown water in the ship’s drinking water system; crew members were being served expired food, and water used to process fish leaked into dry food storage and the galley.
OSHA discovered employees were exposed to dangerous electrical hazards throughout the vessel, including damaged and improperly installed electrical equipment, and broken outlets near water.
OSHA cited the ship’s operator, East West Seafoods LLC, and owner Christos Tsabouris for 17 serious violations, and proposed $208,983 in penalties.
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OSHA cracks down on industry cleaners

OSHA has developed strict regulations around the use of sandblasting and other activities that risk producing crystalline silica.
This was in response to a popular industrial cleaning method called sandblasting, where a jet of sand particles is blown at the surface to roughen or strip it down.
However, silica sand and particles from the blasting can get into workers’ lungs, causing silicosis, with an estimated 1 million U.S. workers currently at risk of silicosis.
Another common, but potentially dangerous, blasting method is dry ice blasting, where dry ice pellets are air blown at the metal surface.
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